Johannesburg - Although teacher education courses must provide a good grounding in content and methodology, it must also address issues of both values and professional ethics.
"If teachers are really committed to educating their students and putting a lot of effort into this, no amount of re-organisation, curriculum change, school management theory or quality assurance will help," said Minister of Higher Education and Training Blade Nzimande.
Speaking at the closing ceremony of the Teacher Development Summit on Thursday, Minister Nzimande challenged teachers to see themselves in the context of national renewal and development as the nation's main instruments to achieve transformation and liberation.
He said most South African children were disadvantaged, emphasising that a good education is one of their only pathways out of poverty and towards a more fulfilling life.
"On our side as the departments, we see teachers as a huge national asset and resource," he said.
The minister also emphasised the importance of provincial education departments and the universities to develop close working partnerships and engage in joint planning to ensure that provinces have an adequate supply of teachers, who were aligned to curriculum needs.
He said in any assessment of whether colleges should be re-opened, the first step was to look at why they were closed in the first place.
The reasons for closing of colleges, the minister said was due to quality teacher training provided by most of them, which was considered to be very low.
On the other hand, the minister said the main reason for the call for the re-opening of the colleges is that 150 odd colleges were scattered across the country and more accessible especially to rural communities.
He said universities were also much less accessible, both in geographically and in terms of their enrolment requirement including the issue of fees.
"It is clear that we have been having problems producing enough teachers to meet the needs of the schooling system, following the incorporation in 2001, service bursary schemes for teachers, which were previously offered to all students entering the teaching professions were withdrawn.
"One of the major impacts of this has been a reduced supply of new teachers coming into the system, not surprisingly the closure of teacher training capacity in the form of the colleges has been blamed for this," the minister said.
Teachers were also challenged to support each other by working as a collective to ensure that they refine their skills and also help to keep each other's spirits and commitment high.
This collectivity in each school is as important for teacher development as are training courses and should be taken seriously, he said.
He also challenged teacher unions to discipline those teachers who neglect their duties. "Unions have a responsibility to confront their members who are ill disciplined and have lack of commitment," the minister said.
Themed "Perfecting the art of teaching", the summit debated the teacher landscape with the aim of establishing the most effective systems for large scale teacher development and leading to a sustainable improvement in the quality of teaching in all South African schools.
